Prior art pockets, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,129,387 to Chess and U.S. Pat. No. 5,318,324 to Lombardo, are made of paper or paper-like material. As a result, one cannot see through the pocket to view information that is recorded on the card or, if no card is in the pocket, one cannot see through the pocket to view information or images recorded on the surface to which the card is attached. In the case of music compact disks, a great deal of information is typically visible on the compact disc case, some or all of which would be obscured by an opaque pocket.
Further, such pockets experience substantial stress at the corners where the front panel and rear panel join, mostly from insertion and removal of the cataloging card. The prior art methods of reinforcing stress points on such a pocket include using heavier paper stock or folding the paper at a stress point to create a double sheet. In either case, the reinforcement causes the paper pocket to become thicker and more bulky.
In addition, the pockets disclosed in Chess and Lombardo require preparation and folding before they are ready for use in a book or on other media. Specifically, such pockets require selective removal of strips to expose adhesive, folding the intermediates into a suitable pocket shape and applying the formed pocket to the book or other media. The folding of such pockets increases the bulk of the pockets, causing them to fit poorly in some books. In addition, the necessity of folding and preparing the pockets for use makes them inconvenient to use.
Other prior art pockets, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,592,381 and 3,372,858, both to Brody, adhere to the book or other media over only a portion of their back surface and use the media surface to form one portion of the pocket. As a result, such pockets are not securely attached to the book or other media. In addition, because the adhesive that is used to form the sides of such a pocket is also the adhesive that attaches the pocket to the book, it is possible for a card contained in such a pocket to contact the adhesive, thereby marring the card and weakening the adhesive.
What is needed is a pocket that is made of clear, archival material and that is thin, durable and easily mounted to a wide variety of cataloged media.